Trump Desires to be Sued Over Birthright Citizenship, Does Anyone Understand Why?

[Gadianton]

Your statement stands out as the most disappointing I've encountered on this board, clearly highlighting the reasons behind Trump's presidency.

It's hard to fathom that I need to clarify this for you, but I will proceed regardless. The Democrats require a border plan, as it is the government's duty to safeguard the American people from both foreign and domestic threats. An open border poses a significant threat! Do you not think that an open border poses a significant risk?

I think you should return to Canpakes' salient question, "Otherwise, what would you propose, and why?"

You've flat out told me that you don't owe us this information. You're not going to tell us anything about Democratic ideals. Despite what seems to be a deep knowledge you have of political history, you've played right into the reason why Trump is the very man for the job. You accept at face value all the MAGA Republican talking points about these vast "foreign and domestic threats" that require immediate action. You want us to out-Trump Trump, play deeper into right-wing fear-mongering, and then provide the same solution to the problem that the right has proclaimed as the problem, only it's our guy in office rather than theirs. You're letting them control the narrative.

As I've stated before, Democrats and Republicans are on the opposite side of the border situation than they should be. You don't want to admit it, but Democrats lean toward more government in a mixed economy of government and private industry, while Republicans historically lean less government. Republicans should believe in free trade and put their faith in the market to optimize rather than rely on borders and tariffs, but Democrats may actually have some better reasons for securing the border. Peter Zeihan is an excellent example of an old-school free-market Republican who is appalled by Trump's border crackdown and promotes the benefits of relatively free immigration. A firm believer in the power of the market, like Zeihan, isn't in a constant state of panic about domestic threats walking across the border and further, to the extent that such threats exist, isn't a sucker who believes that building a stupid wall is going to keep them out.

A huge problem in America right now is healthcare. Private industry has utterly failed thus far to provide a respectable solution to our population's healthcare needs. Obama was on track with Obamacare. Obama was also big on deportation and securing the border. I'll admit I didn't pay much attention to his presidency, I always assumed that his measures, which weren't received very well, made theoretical sense, at least. If you're going to be a nation that provides social benefits, it's simply unrealistic to have the door wide open to allow anyone to walk in and take advantage of it. All of those socially enlightened European countries with national healthcare most definitely do NOT have open borders. So there you go, Hound, an actual valid reason why Democrats may want to consider locking down the border.

As just one possible example of a way forward: perhaps universal healthcare, or at least better healthcare ought to become part of the future Democratic agenda. In that case some serious talks about why that can't happen without stricter boarder control would be on the table for actual legitimate and valid reasons, rather than merely playing into alt-right xenophobia.

[canpakes]

Why do Democrats need ‘a border plan’? This is The Trump Show now. Let it play out. His policies, his results.

Your statement stands out as the most disappointing I've encountered on this board, clearly highlighting the reasons behind Trump's presidency.

It's hard to fathom that I need to clarify this for you, but I will proceed regardless. The Democrats require a border plan, as it is the government's duty to safeguard the American people from both foreign and domestic threats. An open border poses a significant threat! Do you not think that an open border poses a significant risk?

Perhaps you may not, but the American electorate certainly did! When did an open border policy become integral to the identity of the Democratic Party?

There are several responsibilities that each party must uphold when they hold the majority, including maintaining a secure border and a robust national defense. When the ruling party appears indifferent to the protection of American citizens, it often leads to the minority party gaining control of the Supreme Court, the House, the Senate, the White House, and the popular vote. Does that ring a bell?

Allow me to clarify my point in another manner, with the hope that you will see how your negative outlook impacted our chances in the election. Regardless of which party is in power, it is essential for both parties to uphold these fundamental responsibilities to ensure a secure and safe environment for the American people to live their lives normally, as these are vital for our national security. When voters perceive a party as safeguarding and upholding these fundamental responsibilities, essentially the stable foundation from which both parties should function before attempting to introduce any policies for an upcoming election, the American electorate will allow considerable flexibility for policy modifications and new policy concepts. When a party permits the foundation that both sides are committed to safeguarding to deteriorate, they frequently face removal from office for failing to protect the American populace.

This is precisely why a border plan is essential! We must take it upon ourselves to establish a border plan. Do you disagree? Do you believe that we have become a party focused solely on F Trump and that will allow us to win elections?

Lol. No, Hound. Look at that again.

Why do ‘the Democrats’ need a border plan now that is different than Trump’s? How would they impose it?

And what would you propose? And how would you package it so that it doesn’t look ‘in opposition’ to Trump’s actions, which is something you’re admonishing Democrats to not do?

You’re contradicting yourself badly, and it shows. ; )

[canpakes]

You've flat out told me that you don't owe us this information. You're not going to tell us anything about Democratic ideals.

Of course not. He’s too busy trying to use grade-school reverse psychology and trolling for the idea that Americans should ignore the rule of law. That’s more of a Trumpian philosophy than anything else. : D

[Markk]

The original intent of the amendment has been taken advantage of, it was written after the Civil War for freed slaves, and he wants the Supreme Court to revisit it and make a decision, at least from what I have read.

Ironically, as I am writing this I am listening to the news on TV, and this just came up. A constitutional lawyer, Katie Cherasky, is stating that the Supreme Court has never offered a decision on this, and there is no precedence, and IHO Trump wants the court to hear this.

This will be an interesting one for sure.

You got bad information
See
United States v. Wong Kim Ark

Thanks!

I have been reading through the decision on different sites and it is not easy to get through. There is a lot of very thick reference to English common law. But in the end it appeared to me that the Court decided he was a citizen, no if's, and's, or but's.

I then read (wiki, I know!) that the reason that it is said that the the Supreme Court hasn't "seriously" questioned it because the concept of "Illegal Alien" had not yet entered into the "language." The argument seems to be that the 14th amendment does not apply to parents that are in this country illegally, and birth a child.

A footnote reference to "Plyler v. Doe ties the right of free public education to all undocumented children with the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment, which seems to be part of the argument. This was a heated decision and CJOTSC "William Rehnquist was so disgusted by the decision that he referred to illegal immigrant children as "wetbacks" in conference, which angered Thurgood Marshall, the only non-white justice on the court."


There is far more to go through on this that I will ever do, but it will be a interesting case it the court decides to hear it.

[Markk]

The US-Mexico border is nearly 2000 miles long—a bit over 3000 kilometres—and then there is all the US coast that could be reached by sea from Mexico. If I think about what it would take to really close off all this access, my admittedly inexpert estimates keep coming out pretty big. Like, pretty much deploying the entire US Marine Corps to this single mission.

It could no doubt be done. Conceivably it could be worth it. I don't think it could be a small undertaking. It would be an operation on the scale of a war, just because there is so much distance to cover.

I believe border control will be phased. It appears to me that the first phase is to get those that are a danger to us out of here, while tightening up the main ports of entry.

Another action needs to be targeting the cartels. They charge 5-20k to bring folks up to, or across the border. I believe that will be a new target, to stop the human smuggling.

I have heard that selected Law enforcement agencies and task forces will be cross sworn with ICE, so they can directly deport those that they arrest in order to by past holds that are seldom given at the jails.

Expanding the border wall will happen. And I assume that a new drone and electronic deterrents will be used to monitor much of the border away from the border towns and crossings.

We will see how they phase this, and how well we adapt to unanticipated negatives that might arise.

[Gunnar]

Expanding the border wall will happen. And I assume that a new drone and electronic deterrents will be used to monitor much of the border away from the border towns and crossings.

We will see how they phase this, and how well we adapt to unanticipated negatives that might arise.

Expanding the border wall will not improve the situation in the slightest, and will have only negative consequences, including severe environmental ones.

The Border Wall Has Been ‘Absolutely Devastating’ for People and Wildlife

When Lisa Manuel was a child, her mother would take her to Quitobaquito Springs, a rare oasis amid the giant cacti and rolling hills of southwest Arizona’s Sonoran Desert. For at least 10,000 years, the spring has been a vital source of water for wildlife and people, including the Tohono O’odham and Hia-Ced O’odham, whose ancestral territory spans the U.S.-Mexico border. “It’s been a part of my family all my life,” says Manuel, a descendant from the Hia-Ced O’odham. “It’s a beautiful place. It’s a sacred place. I sit there and I pray.”

For months Manuel and others have fought to defend this ancient haven, which they fear is being destroyed by construction of President Donald Trump’s signature border wall just 200 feet from a pond the spring feeds. Since August 2019, crews installing a 30-foot-high wall in Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument have blasted sacred sites near Quitobaquito and used up to 3 million gallons of groundwater per month to mix concrete.

The project is part of the administration’s ongoing effort to install at least 450 miles of new and replacement barrier along the 2,000-mile southern border before Trump leaves office, much of it on protected public lands. The result, according to Indigenous communities and environmental advocates, has been ecological and cultural destruction on a shocking scale. “This new construction has bulldozed a huge amount of desert habitat, blasted rugged mountains, destroyed cultural sites,” says Laiken Jordahl, a campaigner with the Center for Biological Diversity. “It’s absolutely devastating.”

6 ways the border wall could disrupt the environment - National …


For example:

1. Threatening diverse landscapes
The border stretches for 1,954 miles from the Gulf of Mexico in Texas to the Pacific Ocean in California over one of the nation’s most diverse landscapes. It includes six separate eco-regions, ranging from desert scrub to forest woodlands to wetland marshes, both freshwater and salt.


Construction of a border wall will bisect the geographic range of 1,506 native animals and plants, including 62 species that are listed as critically endangered. A team of conservation experts, including Edward O. Wilson, famed biologist and naturalist, argued in a paper published last July in Bioscience that a border wall puts these habitats at risk. A wall increases soil erosion. It will alter natural water flows and the patterns of wildfire, exacerbating the risks of both to people and animals by trapping their escape.

2. Exacerbating flooding
Flooding disasters occurred in Arizona after 700 miles of fencing was constructed during the George W. Bush administration. The barriers acted as dams during rainy season flash floods. In 2008, at the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument in southwest Arizona, a five-mile-long segment of 15-foot-high wire mesh fence trapped debris flowing through a natural wash during a 90-minute summer thunderstorm, causing water to pool two-to-seven feet high.


The same storm sent torrents into the city of Nogales, Arizona, a border town 66 miles south of Tucson, causing millions of dollars in property damage in Nogales, Sonora on the Mexican side. In 2011, another deluge at Organ Pipe knocked over a segment of fence, and in 2014, the twin cities of Nogales flooded again after border barriers clogged with debris during a rainstorm.

3. Perils to wildlife and plants
The border wall could disconnect a third of 346 native wildlife species from 50 percent or more of their range that lies south of the border, the Bioscience paper concluded. That raises the risk to their survival by shrinking and isolating animal populations and limiting their ability to roam for food, water, and mates. Fencing also traps wildlife from escaping fires, floods, or heat waves. Even the pygmy owl is at risk, because when flying, it’s range is less than five feet off the ground.

Santa Catalina Island fox
a Florida scrub jay
a critically endangered flattened musk turtle
a narrow-headed garter snake
a spotted seal
a kentucky arrow darter
a Southeastern beach mouse
a male Steller's eider
an American crocodile
an Oregon spotted frog
a wood stork
a yellow-blotched map turtle
a Stock Island tree snail
a Mexican ridge-nosed rattlesnake
a Yosemite toad
a Mexican spotted owl
a crayfish
a red knot
a frosted flat woods salamander
a spectacled eider
an eastern indigo snake
a salado salamander
spring pygmy sunfish
a gopher tortoise
a snail darter
a piping plover
a ringed map turtle


1 of 27
A rare Santa Catalina Island fox, Urocyon littoralis catalinae, at Catalina Island Conservancy.
Photograph by Joel Sartore, National Geographic Photo Ark
Border fencing disrupts seasonal migration, affecting access to water and birthing sites for Peninsular bighorn sheep that roam between California and Mexico. The inability to cross the border has fragmented populations of Sonoran pronghorn, and diminished the chances of re-establishing colonies of the Mexican gray wolf, jaguars, and ocelots in their range in the United States. Jaguars once roamed the banks of the Rio Grande, but have virtually disappeared from Texas.

Limits on migration, in turn, affects plants. The seeds of mesquite trees germinate best after they have passed through the digestive systems of javelinas and coyotes, according to a report by Defenders of Wildlife. (See panoramas of the borderlands.)

4. Dividing a river
The meandering Rio Grande, the official border between the United States and Mexico, was long believed to be a geologic obstacle to construction of a border fence. The river channel shifts course from time to time and floods in the spring. To build a wall north of the river would, in effect, cede control of those lands to Mexico and isolate property and homes owned by U.S. citizens on the Mexican side of the wall.


That thinking has changed. Last spring, Congress approved $1.6 billion to build more wall, mostly in Texas. Plans by Homeland Security call for construction of 25 miles of wall on flood control levees in Hildalgo County, sometimes more than a mile from the border. Another eight miles is planned to go up in neighboring Starr County.

5. Disrupting wildlife refuges and parks
Proposals under consideration would locate the wall through seven Texas wildlife conservation areas, including the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge and Big Bend National Park, prized among national parks as a place so remote it is considered to be one of the best place in the Lower 48 to view the night sky.

In Mission, Texas, the National Butterfly Center, where more than 200 butterfly species live near the banks of the Rio Grande, has been notified that the wall will divide the 100-acre sanctuary, placing almost 70 percent of it on the Mexican side. Plans also call for bisecting a wildlife refuge and state park, placing most of the land on the Mexican side.

After ferocious objections, Homeland Security shelved plans to build the wall through the Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge in Alamo, Texas, where more than 400 species of birds, banded armadillos, and endangered wildcats live.

6. Exemption from environmental oversight laws
Construction of the border wall does not have to meet the requirements of more than 30 of the most sweeping and effective federal environmental laws, such as the Endangered Species Act, National Environmental Policy Act, the Clean Air Act, and the Clean Water Act. That’s due to the REAL ID Act, passed by Congress in 2005 in response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks. It authorizes Homeland Security to waive any laws in the name of national security.


Multiple lawsuits challenging the REAL ID law date to 2006. So far, none have survived court appeals that would place the constitutional question concerning expansive executive branch authority before the Supreme Court. The challenges continue.

[Gunnar]

see also:

https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch ... ico-border

https://mexico.arizona.edu/revista/does ... odiversity

https://www.scientificamerican.com/arti ... repaired1/

https://www.bing.com/search?pglt=2339&q ... TS&ntref=1

It seems quite clear that the negative consequences of an extensive and comprehensive wall along the Mexico USA border very far outweigh all real and potential benefits. Like it or not! There are ways to monitor border crossings without building a monolithic, environmentally disastrous physical barrier, though no conceivable method can stop 100% of all unwanted border crossings -- not even a physical wall.

[Markk]

Expanding the border wall will happen. And I assume that a new drone and electronic deterrents will be used to monitor much of the border away from the border towns and crossings.

We will see how they phase this, and how well we adapt to unanticipated negatives that might arise.

Expanding the border wall will not improve the situation in the slightest, and will have only negative consequences, including severe environmental ones.

The Border Wall Has Been ‘Absolutely Devastating’ for People and Wildlife

When Lisa Manuel was a child, her mother would take her to Quitobaquito Springs, a rare oasis amid the giant cacti and rolling hills of southwest Arizona’s Sonoran Desert. For at least 10,000 years, the spring has been a vital source of water for wildlife and people, including the Tohono O’odham and Hia-Ced O’odham, whose ancestral territory spans the U.S.-Mexico border. “It’s been a part of my family all my life,” says Manuel, a descendant from the Hia-Ced O’odham. “It’s a beautiful place. It’s a sacred place. I sit there and I pray.”

For months Manuel and others have fought to defend this ancient haven, which they fear is being destroyed by construction of President Donald Trump’s signature border wall just 200 feet from a pond the spring feeds. Since August 2019, crews installing a 30-foot-high wall in Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument have blasted sacred sites near Quitobaquito and used up to 3 million gallons of groundwater per month to mix concrete.

The project is part of the administration’s ongoing effort to install at least 450 miles of new and replacement barrier along the 2,000-mile southern border before Trump leaves office, much of it on protected public lands. The result, according to Indigenous communities and environmental advocates, has been ecological and cultural destruction on a shocking scale. “This new construction has bulldozed a huge amount of desert habitat, blasted rugged mountains, destroyed cultural sites,” says Laiken Jordahl, a campaigner with the Center for Biological Diversity. “It’s absolutely devastating.”

6 ways the border wall could disrupt the environment - National ...


For example:

1. Threatening diverse landscapes
The border stretches for 1,954 miles from the Gulf of Mexico in Texas to the Pacific Ocean in California over one of the nation’s most diverse landscapes. It includes six separate eco-regions, ranging from desert scrub to forest woodlands to wetland marshes, both freshwater and salt.


Construction of a border wall will bisect the geographic range of 1,506 native animals and plants, including 62 species that are listed as critically endangered. A team of conservation experts, including Edward O. Wilson, famed biologist and naturalist, argued in a paper published last July in Bioscience that a border wall puts these habitats at risk. A wall increases soil erosion. It will alter natural water flows and the patterns of wildfire, exacerbating the risks of both to people and animals by trapping their escape.

2. Exacerbating flooding
Flooding disasters occurred in Arizona after 700 miles of fencing was constructed during the George W. Bush administration. The barriers acted as dams during rainy season flash floods. In 2008, at the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument in southwest Arizona, a five-mile-long segment of 15-foot-high wire mesh fence trapped debris flowing through a natural wash during a 90-minute summer thunderstorm, causing water to pool two-to-seven feet high.


The same storm sent torrents into the city of Nogales, Arizona, a border town 66 miles south of Tucson, causing millions of dollars in property damage in Nogales, Sonora on the Mexican side. In 2011, another deluge at Organ Pipe knocked over a segment of fence, and in 2014, the twin cities of Nogales flooded again after border barriers clogged with debris during a rainstorm.

3. Perils to wildlife and plants
The border wall could disconnect a third of 346 native wildlife species from 50 percent or more of their range that lies south of the border, the Bioscience paper concluded. That raises the risk to their survival by shrinking and isolating animal populations and limiting their ability to roam for food, water, and mates. Fencing also traps wildlife from escaping fires, floods, or heat waves. Even the pygmy owl is at risk, because when flying, it’s range is less than five feet off the ground.

Santa Catalina Island fox
a Florida scrub jay
a critically endangered flattened musk turtle
a narrow-headed garter snake
a spotted seal
a kentucky arrow darter
a Southeastern beach mouse
a male Steller's eider
an American crocodile
an Oregon spotted frog
a wood stork
a yellow-blotched map turtle
a Stock Island tree snail
a Mexican ridge-nosed rattlesnake
a Yosemite toad
a Mexican spotted owl
a crayfish
a red knot
a frosted flat woods salamander
a spectacled eider
an eastern indigo snake
a salado salamander
spring pygmy sunfish
a gopher tortoise
a snail darter
a piping plover
a ringed map turtle


1 of 27
A rare Santa Catalina Island fox, Urocyon littoralis catalinae, at Catalina Island Conservancy.
Photograph by Joel Sartore, National Geographic Photo Ark
Border fencing disrupts seasonal migration, affecting access to water and birthing sites for Peninsular bighorn sheep that roam between California and Mexico. The inability to cross the border has fragmented populations of Sonoran pronghorn, and diminished the chances of re-establishing colonies of the Mexican gray wolf, jaguars, and ocelots in their range in the United States. Jaguars once roamed the banks of the Rio Grande, but have virtually disappeared from Texas.

Limits on migration, in turn, affects plants. The seeds of mesquite trees germinate best after they have passed through the digestive systems of javelinas and coyotes, according to a report by Defenders of Wildlife. (See panoramas of the borderlands.)

4. Dividing a river
The meandering Rio Grande, the official border between the United States and Mexico, was long believed to be a geologic obstacle to construction of a border fence. The river channel shifts course from time to time and floods in the spring. To build a wall north of the river would, in effect, cede control of those lands to Mexico and isolate property and homes owned by U.S. citizens on the Mexican side of the wall.


That thinking has changed. Last spring, Congress approved $1.6 billion to build more wall, mostly in Texas. Plans by Homeland Security call for construction of 25 miles of wall on flood control levees in Hildalgo County, sometimes more than a mile from the border. Another eight miles is planned to go up in neighboring Starr County.

5. Disrupting wildlife refuges and parks
Proposals under consideration would locate the wall through seven Texas wildlife conservation areas, including the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge and Big Bend National Park, prized among national parks as a place so remote it is considered to be one of the best place in the Lower 48 to view the night sky.

In Mission, Texas, the National Butterfly Center, where more than 200 butterfly species live near the banks of the Rio Grande, has been notified that the wall will divide the 100-acre sanctuary, placing almost 70 percent of it on the Mexican side. Plans also call for bisecting a wildlife refuge and state park, placing most of the land on the Mexican side.

After ferocious objections, Homeland Security shelved plans to build the wall through the Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge in Alamo, Texas, where more than 400 species of birds, banded armadillos, and endangered wildcats live.

6. Exemption from environmental oversight laws
Construction of the border wall does not have to meet the requirements of more than 30 of the most sweeping and effective federal environmental laws, such as the Endangered Species Act, National Environmental Policy Act, the Clean Air Act, and the Clean Water Act. That’s due to the REAL ID Act, passed by Congress in 2005 in response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks. It authorizes Homeland Security to waive any laws in the name of national security.


Multiple lawsuits challenging the REAL ID law date to 2006. So far, none have survived court appeals that would place the constitutional question concerning expansive executive branch authority before the Supreme Court. The challenges continue.

What do you think the influx of border traffic is doing to the environment. Have you seen and smelled the filth at the border? Walk across the border some time, you live in so ca. right? Walk across at TJ. Google trash at the Southern Border. What do you think the thousands of people trampling through the desert does to the environment? Where do you think they use the restroom? Most of the "animals" you pasted can simply crawl through the wall design your link shows.

The wall is not going to come with some environmental impacts for sure, and it is sad. But weighing our options it seems a necessity until the two wings of our government can come together and have the will to stop it once and for all. We has a process to become a citizen, and we need to hold them to it.

Gunner wrote: Expanding the border wall will not improve the situation in the slightest,

While you are googling the negative aspects of the wall, which obviously exist, be objective and google the positives from the perspective of the border patrol that have to police the border. It helps them organize and direct the flow where they can manage it better. Your statement here is just false, the wall does help, a lot.

Here is one of many

https://www.cbp.gov/frontline/walls-work


Do you want a open border?

[Doctor Steuss]

A constitutional lawyer, Katie Cherasky, is stating that the Supreme Court has never offered a decision on this, and there is no precedence, and IHO Trump wants the court to hear this.

Isn't United States v. Wong Kim Ark literally a precedence for this exact thing? Whether someone born to non-citizens on US soil is a citizen by birthright. You sure she's not just a news personality with a law degree that claims to specialize in Constitutional Law? Or perhaps I'm not understanding what precedence you're referring to.


Unrelated (but related), but some may find it helpful to read the Cato Institute's Director of Immigration Studies recent testimony to the House. Unless Cato has became a leftist outlet in recent times, and can no longer be trusted by people with right-leaning ideologies..

[Gunnar]

Do you want a open border?

No, I don't necessarily want an open border, and I don't think we really have one now. But thank you for sharing the information you showed me that there are ways to design barriers that can effectively reduce the number of illegal border crossings but are also less environmentally damaging. There are certainly sections of the border where walls make more sense and are more practical than at other sites. I won't deny that, but there are also large sections of the border where building a wall is both impractical and prohibitively expensive. I don't think that building a wall along the entire 1,954-mile length of the border is either practical or the most cost-effective means of securing our border. I am convinced that there are large sections of the border where electronic surveillance and aerial surveillance by both manned and autonomous aircraft plus ground vehicles can be both sufficiently effective and more cost effective.

Yet, I think it would be nice if relations and mutual trust between us and our neighbor nations were such that communication and travel between us were freer and less hostile, more like the minimal restrictions concerning crossing the borders between the individual U.S. states or between the various nations of the EU. I know that isn't possible or practical now, but I wish it were.